Reminders
by Bar Sira
Summary: How poetry entered the life of the Community, and what happened as a result.
1. An Unexpected Voice

**Author 's note: **I started this story a few months ago on my main, "Qoheleth" account, and finished these three chapters before deciding that it just wasn't that good a fit for me. I really liked the three chapters I had, though, and so I decided to post them here – which means that this story, like most of the other unfinished stories on this account, is up for adoption. Make me an offer.

**Disclaimer:** The author of this story is my father's son, yet I have no brother. It must not be Lois Lowry, then.

* * *

It was a day much like any other – as most days are, of course, in a Community dedicated to a policy of Sameness. Roughly two months had passed since the disappearance of the young Receiver-in-training; he still hadn't been found, but neither had the troubles of eleven years ago recurred, so it was presumed that he was still alive somewhere. (Inquiries had been sent out to nearby Communities, but none had had any new arrivals from Elsewhere recently.) In any case, the anticipation and dread that had been almost palpable in the Community all through December had slowly evaporated, and life had returned to normal. By the fifteenth of February, no-one was expecting anything unusual – certainly nothing like what occurred.

It happened near the beginning of the afternoon, just as the schoolchildren were returning from recreation. The scene in the Sevens' classroom was typical: most of the students had settled down into their seats, a few were still giggling with residual ebullience, and the Instructor was smiling tolerantly as she waited for those last few to calm down.

Katharine was among those who were already settled in place. She was feeling a bit tired today, and not as energetic as she usually was; she wasn't sure why. Probably her father would help her to understand it at the sharing of feelings that evening, but the truth was that she didn't really mind not understanding it. The important thing about feelings was to feel them, not to think about them.

Of course, that wasn't the way her father saw things at all. He was an Instructor of Fives, and he thought it was very important to think about feelings. "If you don't understand your feelings," he would say, "you'll end up doing some very foolish things because of them." And that made sense to Katharine, but she still thought that it must be all right to just be happy, or sad, or pensive every now and then, without worrying about why. So long as you didn't let it keep you from doing what you were supposed to; wasn't that the important thing?

Well, anyway, right now she was supposed to be paying attention to her Instructor. She straightened herself in her seat, and raised a hand to smooth out her hair ribbons – and, at that moment, the speaker on the wall crackled to life.

ATTENTION, came the Speaker's voice. THIS IS A REMINDER…

And then it stopped – just stopped right there, in the middle of the announcement. It was as though the school's connection to the Speaker's office had somehow been cut off – but it hadn't been, obviously, because the light above the speaker was still gleaming as brightly as ever. And, besides, it hadn't sounded like the sort of stop caused by a broken connection; there was a different sort of sound to the Speaker's voice than when he got cut off in the middle of a sentence. This time, it was as though he had started to make an announcement and then forgotten what he was supposed to say – or, maybe, had suddenly become too afraid to say it.

A chill went down Katharine's spine. She thought of the missing Receiver-in-training, and how everyone in the Community had been so afraid for the future only a few months before; had something happened to bring that fear back?

She glanced at her Instructor, to see if she understood what was happening. The Instructor's brow was furrowed, and she was staring at the speaker in obvious puzzlement, but she didn't seem afraid, which relieved Katharine a bit. She admired her current Instructor a great deal – more, probably, than she admired any other adult except her parents – and, until she showed that she was worried, Katharine was prepared to assume that nothing was really wrong.

But she wished that the Speaker would finish his announcement. The silence was starting to unnerve her – and it seemed to be unnerving her classmates, as well. She saw Ranjith tapping his foot anxiously against the side of his chair, and Beatrice reverting to her old habit of chewing her fingernails. (In spite of the tension, Katharine smiled to herself; Beatrice had been doing very well with that lately, but the stern Childcare worker who checked her fingers every day probably wouldn't give her much credit for that.)

The tension continued to build for perhaps half a minute longer; then the Speaker spoke again, not in his usual, self-important voice, but in a tone of surprised, almost dreamy happiness. YES, he said. THIS IS A REMINDER.

There was a moment's pause, and then new words began to emerge from the speaker – words that were utterly unlike anything Katharine, or anyone else within hearing range of them, had ever heard or dreamed of before.

_I wandered lonely as a cloud  
__That floats on high o'er vales and hills,  
__When all at once I saw a crowd –  
__A host of golden daffodils  
__Beside the lake, beneath the trees,  
__Fluttering and dancing in the breeze._

_Continuous as the stars that shine  
__And twinkle on the Milky Way,  
__They stretched in never-ending line  
__Along the margin of a bay;  
__Ten thousand saw I, at a glance,  
__Tossing their heads in sprightly dance._

_The waves beside them danced, but they  
__Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;  
__A poet could not but be gay  
__In such a jocund company.  
__I gazed, and gazed, but little thought  
__What wealth the show to me had brought…_

Here, for a moment, the Speaker seemed to hesitate, as though he had suddenly realized what he was doing, and was unsure whether he dared to let the weird locution reach its end. But the thing, once begun, was not so easily ended; the words rang out once again, even more gladly loud than before:

_For oft, when on my couch I lie,  
__In vacant or in pensive mood,  
__They flash upon that inward eye  
__Which is the bliss of solitude;  
__And then my heart with pleasure fills,  
__And dances with the daffodils._

And the speaker fell silent once again.

* * *

It was fully a minute before anyone in the classroom moved. Not that they expected there to be more; they knew, instinctively, that the last phrase had completed the Speaker's "reminder". But none of them trusted themselves to move. They felt as though they had suddenly been transported into a dream, and that, if they turned too suddenly or spoke too loudly, the entire Community would dissolve around them, and they would find themselves in some utterly different place. It was, for all of them, a terrifying feeling; for about half of them, it was also a delicious one; and for Katharine, though she didn't realize it at the time, it was the moment when she first ceased to be a Seven.

After a while, the Instructor cleared her throat, and her entire class jumped and turned to her almost in unison. "Well," she said, her voice as steady as ten years' training could make it, "I hope that that was helpful to whomever it was meant for. Now, shall we open our books and resume where we left off?"


	2. Defense of Poesy

So the Sevens returned to Instruction, and their Instructor did her best to impart to them the knowledge that she believed to be suitable and worthwhile. So far as Katharine was concerned, though, it was wasted effort; when she left the school that afternoon, she remembered nothing that her Instructor had said during those last three hours. Her mind was too full of the strange, frightening, wonderful reminder that had broken so mysteriously into her afternoon's routine.

_I wandered lonely as a cloud… _What was a cloud, she wondered? What were vales and hills, what were trees, and stars, and waves? What was a lake, and a breeze, and a bay? Above all, what were daffodils? The reminder had been all about them, and they were clearly important, but Katharine couldn't begin to guess what they were. All she knew was that they were golden – and she knew what gold was, it was a kind of soft metal that you made wires out of. Maybe a daffodil was some kind of a wire – but no, that didn't make sense. Why would you have ten thousand wires all in the same place? And, if you did, they would be too heavy to flutter, wouldn't they?

_Fluttering and dancing in the breeze…_ There was another strange word, _dancing_. There were so many strange words in that reminder – but it wasn't just nonsense, she was sure of that. She knew what it was like to make up words that didn't mean anything; she and all her classmates had spent a day doing it as Threes, as an object lesson in why precision of language was important, and they hadn't produced anything like the reminder. Their words had just been silly; the words of the reminder were…

"Beautiful," she said aloud.

Her friend Ophelia, who was walking home with her, turned and stared at her in puzzlement. "What?"

Katharine jumped slightly; she'd been so occupied with her thoughts that she'd almost forgotten that Ophelia was there. "Oh, nothing," she said.

"But you said something," said Ophelia. "A word, I think. Something about being full."

"Beautiful," said Katharine again.

"That's right," said Ophelia. "What does it mean? I never heard that word before."

"I'm not sure," said Katharine, trying to think where she herself had heard it. "It's what the reminder was, I think."

Ophelia's eyes widened slightly, and her lips grew tight and pursed for a moment. "You probably shouldn't say it, then," she said. "I don't think we should be talking about that reminder." (She didn't ask which one, though there had been several that day.)

"Why not?" said Katharine. "There wasn't anything bad about it."

"Yes, there was," said Ophelia. "It's not the kind of reminder a Speaker's supposed to give. When people do what they're not supposed to, that's bad."

This was very good logic for a Seven of the Community, and Katharine didn't quite know how to answer it at first. But she was sure the reminder wasn't bad, and so she thought furiously in silence for a minute or two as the two of them continued walking. Then, abruptly, she turned to Ophelia and said, "But who was supposed to give the reminder, then?"

"Nobody," said Ophelia with certainty. "It wasn't a real reminder. It didn't mean anything, so it didn't have to be…"

"Of course it meant something!" Katharine exclaimed.

"What?" Ophelia challenged.

"Well… I don't know," Katharine admitted. "But it meant something. Otherwise, it wouldn't be beautiful."

"Stop that!" said Ophelia, sounding irritated. "We're not Twos anymore, Katharine. We're not supposed to use words when we don't know what they mean."

"But I _know_ what it means," said Katharine, helplessly. "I just can't explain it."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know anything that's beautiful except the reminder!" said Katharine. "I didn't even know there was a beautiful before I heard the reminder! And you don't like the reminder, so how can I tell you what beautiful means?" And she dropped her head to blink back a sudden onrush of tears.

Ophelia was silent for a long moment. Katharine was almost afraid to look up at her at first; she supposed that Ophelia would be angry with her for shouting at her, and she didn't like to see her friends being angry with her. When she finally raised her head, though, what she saw in Ophelia's face wasn't anger at all. It looked more like fear – like the fear that had been in her mother's face when she had been a Four, and had cut her hand with the kitchen knife.

"Ophelia?" she said uncertainly. "Is something wrong? I apologize if I made you unhappy."

Ophelia swallowed. "I accept your apology," she said, her voice slightly unsteady for the first time that Katharine could remember. "But I think I should… that is… I want to go back and ask the Instructor something."

"Oh," said Katharine. "All right. Do you want me to go with you?"

"No," said Ophelia, a little too quickly. "No, that's all right, Katharine. You go on ahead, and maybe I'll catch up with you later."

Katharine nodded, and Ophelia turned and walked as quickly back toward the school as she could without actually running. Katharine watched her go for a few minutes, frowning slightly; she appreciated Ophelia's politeness in not actually saying that she wanted to get away from her, but it still made her a little unhappy to realize that that was clearly what she had meant.

* * *

As Katharine turned and continued her walk back to her family's dwelling, she thought about her altercation with Ophelia, and the strange word that had started it. Beautiful. The words of the reminder were beautiful. What _did_ that mean?

It didn't just mean that they were precise, or clear. They _were_ those things, she was sure; even though she didn't know what half of them meant, she felt certain that they conveyed definite ideas, and that nobody who knew their meanings would have been confused about the way they were used. In fact, there were some of them that she saw herself were unusually precise – _gay_, for instance. She'd never heard the word before, but she could tell from the whole sense of the reminder that it meant happy – and a special kind of happiness, Katharine thought: a full, carefree kind of happiness, not about this thing or that thing, but about everything at once. (She wondered if she had ever been gay, or if she'd ever met anyone else who was feeling gay. She wasn't sure, but she hoped she had.)

But the reminder's language wasn't beautiful just because it was precise (though she was fairly sure that, if it hadn't been precise, it wouldn't have been beautiful). There was something else about it that was even more important – which, to Katharine, seemed a strange thing. How could anything about language be more important than whether it was precise? Precision was a measure of how well your words matched your thoughts, and the whole purpose of language was to communicate what you were thinking. What else could words be for?

But it seemed that there was more. Her Instructor's lessons, for instance, were always precise, but Katharine had never wanted to repeat them to herself over and over again, to savor the feeling of them inside her mouth, or to listen to someone else say them and simply delight in their sound. About the reminder, however, that was precisely how she felt; indeed, as she walked along, she kept catching herself whispering portions of it under her breath, even though there was no-one else around to listen.

Maybe beautiful meant that it brought pleasure, then. ("_And then my heart with pleasure fills…_" she whispered.) But no, that wasn't right, either. The reminder clearly hadn't brought pleasure to Ophelia, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. Besides, if something was important only because it brought you pleasure, that meant that you were more important than it was, and that wasn't the way it was with the reminder. The reminder was much more important than she was; if she had to cut her hand again, or run away and never see her mother and father again, so that the reminder could keep being beautiful, that would be the right thing to do.

She shivered at that thought, and hoped that it would never become real. Maybe Ophelia was right to be a little afraid of the reminder, and not be sure whether it was good for the Speaker to have given it. Maybe it was dangerous – or not dangerous, exactly, but too important for just anyone to hear. The Elders were probably wise enough to know about it safely; it wouldn't change their lives, or make them unable to do what they were supposed to. But for the ordinary residents of the Community, maybe it was different.

But then the words of the reminder swept back into her mind, and she laughed aloud at her own absurdity. Clearly, if she could think such things, she still didn't understand what it meant for something to be beautiful. How could it be bad for someone to know about something beautiful? Everyone should know about something beautiful. In fact, the best thing would be for everyone and everything to be beautiful – but she didn't suppose that could ever happen. Which was too bad.

And now she was almost to her dwelling. As she hurried the last few steps down the path, the door opened and her mother came out, a worried look on her face. "There you are, Katharine," she said. "Are you all right?"

Katharine smiled, and nodded. "Yes, Mother, I'm fine," she said.

Her mother glanced vaguely down the path. "Where's Ophelia?" she said. "She's usually with you when you get back."

"She went back to ask the Instructor something," said Katharine.

"Oh," said her mother. "Well, I hope that didn't upset you too much. I know how unpleasant it can be to be left alone."

Katharine shook her head. "No, I didn't mind the solitude," she said.

She hadn't meant to use that word, but her mind was so full of the reminder that it slipped out before she could stop it. She winced, and wasn't really surprised when her mother paled and licked her lips. "Yes, well, you'd better come inside now," she said. "Dinner's almost ready, and we don't want… dinner's almost ready."

Katharine nodded, and solemnly climbed the steps to the door, wondering what she was going to do when they reached the sharing of feelings.


	3. Something Huge and Smooth

As the door of Katharine's dwelling swung shut behind her, another door was opening in the small Annex behind the House of the Old. The Receiver of Memory, to whose living area the door belonged, raised his eyes from the book he had been studying and smiled softly at the tall, elegant woman who entered. "Welcome, Marilee," he said.

The Chief Elder returned his greeting courteously but mechanically, her eyes straying to the rows of books that lined the walls of the room. She had called upon the Receiver several times during her nine and a half years as leader of the Community, but never had she felt as ill at ease in his quiet sanctum as she did today. There was something intimidating, suddenly, about all those mysterious volumes; it made her think how large and old the world was, and how much there was about it that she was not permitted to know.

The Receiver's soft voice broke into her thoughts. "What did the Speaker tell you?" he asked.

The Chief Elder blinked, and recollected herself. "Very little," she said. "He had never heard the words of the reminder before, and doesn't know where they came from. All he knows is that, at 13:47 this afternoon, he was compelled to activate the speaker and proclaim them to the Community."

"Proclaim?" said the Receiver.

The Chief Elder nodded. "That was the word he used," she said. "I suppose he meant 'announce', but one can't insist on precision of language at such a moment."

"No," said the Receiver thoughtfully. "Perhaps not. But was that really all he said? Did he, for instance, say anything about how it felt to be… compelled?"

"How it felt?" the Chief Elder repeated.

"Yes," said the Receiver. "Was he frightened? Confused? Ashamed, perhaps?"

The Chief Elder shook her head. "He didn't tell us that," she said. "I suppose he must have been frightened; wouldn't anyone be? But we didn't ask him. We…" She hesitated.

"Yes?" said the Receiver.

"The truth is, we didn't ask him very much at all," said the Chief Elder. "To do so seemed unkind, almost rude. It was quite clear that what had happened wasn't his fault, and none of us were anxious to make him more uncomfortable about it than he already was."

"Did he seem uncomfortable?" said the Receiver.

"Well… no," the Chief Elder admitted. "He was quite composed, in fact. But he must have been uncomfortable, mustn't he? To have something like that happen to you, and to be unable to explain it, must surely be as discomfiting as anything can be."

"Must it?" said the Receiver gravely.

The Chief Elder didn't know how to respond to that, and, after a moment's pause, the Receiver continued. "Suppose that you, Marilee, were lost somewhere far from the Community. And suppose that, just as you were becoming very distressed and lonely, an enormous hand were to reach down out of the sky, pick you up from where you were, and put you down again right in front of the Auditorium. How would you feel then?"

This seemed to the Chief Elder to be sheer nonsense, but she had sat on the Committee too long to doubt the Receiver's wisdom. After a few moments' effort, she succeeded in imagining the situation that the Receiver had described; after a few moments more, she was ready to answer him.

"I suppose," she said slowly, "that I would feel confused by what had happened, but very happy that it had happened." She laughed. "And grateful to the person whose hand it was, also."

The Receiver smiled. "Yes, you would be grateful," he said. "Even if you didn't know who the person was, or how he could have done what he did, you would still be grateful to him, and not afraid or uncomfortable. Because you would be sure, at least, that he was good."

The Chief Elder nodded slowly. "Yes, that's true," she said. "But, with all due respect, Receiver of Memory…" She stopped, uncertain of how to say what she wanted without seeming hopelessly impudent.

"Yes?" said the Receiver.

"Well… I _haven't _been placed in front of the Auditorium by an enormous hand." As the Chief Elder spoke, a grin crept across her face unbidden; the idea, when put thus baldly, seemed so absurd that it was all she could do to keep from laughing in the Receiver's face.

The Receiver didn't seem offended. "No," he agreed. "You haven't, and I don't suppose you ever will be. It would be a very strange thing to have happen, wouldn't it?"

"Very strange, indeed," said the Chief Elder, still smiling at the thought.

"Almost as strange, perhaps," said the Receiver, "as having your mind suddenly filled with an announcement about daffodils."

There was a moment's pause, then – "Yes," said the Chief Elder. "Almost as strange as that."

"And if the one thing can be good, despite being strange," said the Receiver, "maybe the other can be, as well."

The Chief Elder was no longer smiling. "No, Receiver of Memory," she said. "I don't think it can. The idea of the hand was good because the hand brought rescue. Nobody was rescued by today's reminder. Quite the opposite, in fact: people were disturbed, unsettled – the life of the Community was disrupted to no purpose. And what the Committee and I want to know," she said firmly, "is how to keep such a thing from happening again."

The Receiver didn't answer her immediately. His strangely pale eyes had gone vacant, as though he were gazing at something far away. It was an expression the Chief Elder had seen before, each time she had consulted him; it meant that he was drawing on his store of ancient wisdom, and plumbing the world's past for the guidance that the present situation required. She therefore put aside the slight annoyance she had felt with his enigmatic remarks, and waited with patient expectancy for his pronouncement.

"The primordial ooze," the Receiver murmured. "And something huge and smooth…"

This meant nothing to the Chief Elder, but she remained silent. Long ago, when she had been a child, her mother had been continually telling her, "Marilee, don't interrupt your father while he's thinking." (Her father had been a Mathematician; a number of the Community's mechanical devices owed much of their efficiency to his ideas.) She was a grown woman now and the highest authority in the Community – but in the Receiver's Annex, surrounded by his books and waiting on his wisdom, she never failed to feel that same parental stricture that she had known as a Five.

"By what means, though?" said the Receiver. "Is words worth forever, too?" (At least, that was what the Chief Elder heard him say. It surprised her, since she'd never known the Receiver to use incorrect grammar before.)

He meditated for a few moments more, then abruptly raised his head and met the Chief Elder's gaze again. "I advise," he said, "that you assign one of the Elders – Tomas, perhaps – to remain in the Speaker's office with him during his period of work. Then, if he should be seized with such an impulse again, Tomas can observe what happens, and his observations may give us some clues about where this reminder came from."

The Chief Elder didn't trouble to conceal her disappointment. "Is that all?" she said.

"It's all that I can see to do at the moment," said the Receiver. A small smile played about his lips. "Even my wisdom needs something to work with, Marilee."

That, the Chief Elder recognized, was fair enough. "What if the Speaker never is compelled to give another such reminder?" she asked.

"All the better for you, I should say," said the Receiver. "That is what you want to happen, isn't it?"

"Of course," said the Chief Elder, "but Tomas probably won't want to spend the rest of his life watching the Speaker for a loss of control that never comes. How long should we wait before letting him return to his ordinary duties?"

"Ah," said the Receiver. "Now, that is a question." He stroked his beard, and thought for a moment. "I would say that, if there has been no second reminder by the twenty-second of March, there probably never will be. Tell Tomas that he need not keep watching the Speaker after that date."

"The twenty-second of March?" the Chief Elder repeated.

The Receiver nodded. "Whoever or whatever inspired the reminder, I suspect that seasons are important to him," he said. "If he lets the beginning of spring go by without recognizing it in some way, it will be because he has lost interest in us."

"I see," said the Chief Elder. For the briefest of moments, she felt the urge to ask him how he had come to that conclusion, but she suppressed it as quickly as it came. Her job was to apply the Receiver's wisdom, not to seek to understand it.

"I will give Tomas his assignment at daybreak tomorrow, then," she said. "On behalf of the Committee, I thank you, Receiver of Memory."

"I accept your thanks," said the Receiver gravely.

The Chief Elder made a small bow, and left the room.

* * *

The Receiver let out a heavy breath, and reopened the book that lay beside him on the desk. It was a very old book, written in a world that was very different from the one the people of the Community knew; yet, in many ways, it was the most eloquent expression ever made of the virtues that the Community sought by its way of life. The author had nothing but praise for well-ordered living, social usefulness, and clarity of thought; he deplored emotional excess and pointless inquiry. Indeed, it would not have been difficult, the Receiver thought, to present this ancient sage as one of the founders of the Community system; perhaps those who had instituted the Communities, so many generations ago, had thought that they were following his insights.

Yet, all the same, his book was part of the Receiver's library; no other copy existed anywhere in the Community. The Community's past leaders had deemed its contents to be disruptive to the present-day life of the people, and had relegated them to the realm of memory. And rightly so, for, however similar its conclusions were to the Community's, its reasons for reaching those conclusions were utterly inadmissible by those who wished to live as the Community's members did. There were things its author knew – things, indeed, he thought essential to knowledge – that would have turned the world of the Community upside down in an instant if word of them were to spread abroad. And, when the Speaker's reminder had been broadcast to the community that afternoon, it had been to one of these things that the Receiver's mind had flown.

He turned the ancient pages, trying to find the passage again. Yes, there it was: _And is it not for this reason, Glaucon, said I, that education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them, and receive them into his soul to foster its growth, and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but, when reason came, the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her._

The Receiver nodded to himself. Such was, indeed, the cause of education in music; he, with his lifetime's experience of hearing beyond, knew it well. And someone else evidently knew it, too, and was using the Speaker to give the Community this most sovereign form of instruction. But who? And how? And, above all, why?

He sighed, and shook his head. It would be the height of arrogance for him, of all people, to pretend that he knew, or could deduce, the answers to these questions. Three months ago, he had deliberately sent Jonas to his death in the wilderness, thinking that he had known how that would affect the Community – and he had been wrong, and his son had died for nothing. After that, how could he claim to understand the workings of his world?

All the same, though, he still had a faint flicker of intelligence left in his old head, and there was one thing about the Speaker's reminder that he was sure of. Wherever it had come from, and whatever had caused it, it was a foreshadowing of something immense – some great and terrible fortune on the horizon, which would call upon all the wisdom he could muster to keep it from destroying the people of the Community. And when it came, he would have to be ready for it.

And, with that thought, the Receiver stood up, shut the book, and went to prepare himself for bed. For no-one can be properly ready for a great and terrible fortune if he neglects his sleep to stare pointlessly at old books.


End file.
